Archive for category: Planet Reynolds

Many of us read in Malcolm Gladwell’s book, Outliers, that it takes 10,000 hours of intensive practice to achieve mastery of a complex skill.

Which brings me to show prep.

Back in the day, personality-driven shows could get away with winging it.  No longer, though.  The audience’s expectations, along with their A.D.D., won’t allow any show, new or tenured, to make it up as they go along.

I was asked recently to talk with some Audacy brand managers about the growth of talent.  Audacy is making a greater commitment to growing their people.  In the Q&A, their wonderful personality, Katie Neal, asked how to make a show more creative.

Well, you have to put in your 10,000 hours.  But an X Factor to making those hours valuable, and my answer to her question, is to surround everyone with more curiosity.  Creativity and curiosity are tied together, as I’ve discussed in this blog before (Steve Uses the “C” Word).

Prep isn’t sitting around a room, throwing out a big topic and then asking, “What can we do with it?”  Prep is marrying your elusive wonderment against a topic and engaging others to truly come up with angles that are memorable, different, and can’t miss.

In the last two weeks there are two examples with shows I work with that inspire me:

• I had a Curiosity Zoom with Lexi and Banks, KUBL, Salt Lake City. In our chat about the Will Smith-Chris Rock story, it was noted that everyone was curious if the whole thing was faked.  That’s when we all wondered what a body language expert would say if they just watched the video.  So, they found one.  It was a fascinating break around the big topic.  The body language expert shared he thought the whole thing was staged based on what he saw.  Memorable, different, and can’t miss.
• There was no bigger topic than the Final Four match-up between Duke and UNC if you live in the Triangle. We couldn’t do enough around this story line.  Chatting with the morning show Kyle, Bryan, and Sarah, WRAL, Raleigh, someone said that it’s always the next day in Australia.  So, they called a friend there the day before the game to ask who won, claiming it had already been played there.  He said UNC.  Most listeners got the joke.  A few didn’t.  And one called the program for clarification.  The laughter continued.  Memorable, different, and can’t miss.

These two treatments of those two big topics happened because I have curious people on the shows who are forever falling down the rabbit hole, reading about it all to further stimulate their fascination.

Curiosity needs to be nurtured.  Are we doing enough for our talent to do that?

I am so lucky to have been around shows over the years who always practice their curiosity.  In almost every instance, that curiosity has become permanent and part of the ethos on how those shows prep.

Look at your program.  Do you have curious people?  And are they surrounded by even more curiosity?

You want a show that’s memorable, different, and can’t miss?  Go find people like that, who channel their inner 8-year-old, and question everything, with an insatiable appetite to learn more, more, and more about everything.

Then watch what happens to the creativity of the cast and your show.

That ain’t a bad way to spend those 10,000 hours to becoming epic.

No standout show or talent in radio got there by guessing at it.  The Ryan Seacrests and Howard Sterns of our industry ascended to iconic status (iconic:  great ratings, tons of revenue) because there was a strategic process in place to get there.

Does your show have one?  More importantly, do your talent have the three elements necessary for that strategy to work?

A new year brings me new clients.  Because what I do is a boutique service, looking to pay a higher level of attention to fewer shows, I evaluate any potential program around three key elements.  These attributes indicate if those on the show, the ones we’re pining to be Seacrests and Sterns, are a cut above the rest of the market to get there.

Those three areas are their Aptitude, Attitude, and Work Ethic.  Let me touch on each as you think about your talent, hoping they can make a difference building your brand.

Aptitude:  simply put, do the people on the show have talent and a capacity to be bold, gigantic personalities fans crave to be around each morning.  Are they fun/funny?  Do they have a natural interest in what’s going on in the world and a perspective on everything current with no fear to share it?  Can they be vulnerable with their life and honest with the audience?  Are they self-confident and curious?  Are they electric to be around?  Will they get involved locally to generate great content for on-air and social media that can be done in unique ways?

Attitude:  are they positive team builders who put all others above themselves?  Can they lead unselfishly?  Do they figure out how to get stuff done and innovate around speedbumps that appear on the road to great execution of relevant content?  Or are they the types who tell you how something can’t be done or why it won’t work?  I call these the “if only…” people.  If only I had this it would work.  Nope, we create our own path and success.  Great attitudes drive wins.

Work Ethic:  gone are the days where talent could show up, be pretty, and get great ratings.  Because of the competition for listeners’ time, we must work at this (in a word:  prep) and earn it every single break.  Identify the right content, develop a treatment of that content which makes it memorable, and hunker down to pull it off.  I can tell if a show prepped or is winging it when I listen – you can, too.  We no longer have that grace to get this done.

Every talent needs to be coached up (even Tom Brady and Aaron Rodgers are coached up).  Having great aptitude, a superior attitude, and an unparalleled work ethic are the foundational elements of personalities who are difference-makers.

We need talent to help set us apart.  Leaders help groom these attributes in personalities to get them there.

Couple that with a strategy that fits your people, and your win will never be accidental.

Work hard at it and it might even be epic.

I’m an Apple guy and just ordered their new MacBook Pro. It’s received stellar reviews and it’s time to update my laptop, so I placed my order.

One thing Apple gets better than any other of the hundreds of brands I interact with is that they know they’re not in the technology or computer business. They’re in the experience business. I’ve always said that about those of us in radio, too.

The laptop is backordered, and I was told it wouldn’t be delivered until December 23. Then Apple did what Apple does. They managed my expectations to bring me joy. Over the last couple of weeks, as I’ve checked on the status of the order, they’ve consistently moved the delivery date up. As I write this, it’s December 9. Where all other brands are having “supply chain issues” and delaying deliveries, Apple is heightening my anticipation as they always do so I stay joyful and gush about them as I’m doing to you.

Teasing is important in radio. But not for the reason most of us believe. It’s near impossible to extend listening as people have lives and those lives will always win out over them giving us another quarter hour. What great teasing does is set the expectation that listeners will miss something great if they tune out. So they get a sense they won’t be in on something special, so they come back to the show for more of that joy.

Often, I hear shows offer no teasing. That ain’t good. Many times, I hear something bland and unimaginative (“coming up next, our Hollywood Report” or “in six minutes, we’ll talk about when I took my dog to the park”). But when we tease intriguing, connective, relevant, entertaining content, being done in a way our competitors cannot, we bring joy to the break and set the audience to return for more of it the next day.

Worse still, I continue to hear stations and shows tell me that I need to do things like tune in Thursday at 7:20 for a “major announcement”. Only to find out that three days of hype led to the morning show telling me Maroon Five will play at the civic center in the spring and that we have family four packs/win ‘em before you can buy ‘em tickets starting on Monday. Yikes. Half the audience shrugged, the other half yawned, and all of them felt duped.

Expectations are the thief of joy indeed. The more you tease the same thing, the higher the expectation and greater chance of less joy.

Listen to your show. Ask if they are on the very best content available on every single day. Because it all starts with content and everything they do is considered content. Is it substantive and strategic? Does it align the program and cast with an image important to developing a relationship with the audience? Then, is it being done in a way that fits and both heightens expectations and delivers it to bring joy to the audience receiving it?

Our customers (listeners) want happiness. It’s in our control and epic if we bring it to them. But first we must set the right expectation and then deliver on it.

Oh wait, the MacBook Pro is now coming December 2…

I’ve spoken before in Planet Reynolds about the foundational elements every show needs to be strategic:  what is the show about (its “plot”)?  What is your game plan for character development?  Is the cast focused on earning the right images to drive loyalty?  Does the show have significant benchmark appointments, that cannot be duplicated, which will drive occasions back to the program?

I talk with new shows about the “need for C’s”.  A subjective metric to assess if your show is on course.  These are the Four C’s every talent and show should work on, around the framework above, to assure they’re strategic.  How would you rate your show in each of these areas?

1. Connection.  Despite social media, the internet, and all that texting, human beings, at their core, desire connection.  Human to human contact is essential to developing a relationship.  I recently joined Clear so I can get through security lines faster at airports.  From registering to finishing my account at their kiosk to the security line, I was accompanied by an actual human being.  Ever call a customer service number, only to sit through three minutes of pressing “1” for this and “2” for that before you get a person who can help?  I bet you’re not happier after all of that.  Connection is one of radio’s superpowers.  The audience wants to connect with your talent, and they must work on that purposefully when doing the show.
2. Companionship.  We learned during Covid, with everyone sequestered in their homes with their small circle of family for over one year, that companionship is critical.  Companionship fosters a deep relationship.  Think of those in your personal life you’re close to.  They provide you companionship.  Deep inside, so many listeners feel alone.  Scrolling Facebook a million times a day doesn’t fix that.  We can, though, by reminding the audience that, wherever they are in life, they aren’t alone if they hang out with us.
3. Content.  This is how we accomplish numbers one and two above.  We engage with certain websites because we’re looking for content.  We turn on a TV show because we want content.  Pop open Facebook, Instagram or any other social media app?  You’re looking for content.  Same for your audience.  They’re looking for content, too.  Are you on the best content in each break on every day?  Or is it irrelevant pablum the audience shrugs their shoulders at?  The right content affords connection and companionship.
4. Comedy.  Life sucks, so make people laugh.  In the two decades I’ve coached shows in North America and Europe, there is one constant:  no show wins without solid humor images.  Not laugh in a set up/punchline kind of way.  Not in doing wacky “radio bits”.  Listeners want to be around genuine, fun people.  Yea, there are days the news or pop culture cycle compels us to be serious – those are outliers, and we must respect them – but go have fun and people will wanna be around you.

The Four C’s:  Connection, Companionship, Content, and Comedy.

It might be instructional to ask your show to grade themselves in each area on a 1-10 scale, with managers doing it, too.  Compare those grades and see where you match.  Any disparity gives great programmers an opportunity to influence their show with yet another strategic conversation about their growth.

I’d be interested to hear how that turns out so let me know.

Because grading your morning show and giving them all C’s might just keep you on the path to being f’n epic.

Four score and seven years ago, I was interviewing for a job at a classic rock station in Washington, DC owned by Westinghouse (now you know why I said “four score and seven years ago”).

During the interview, the program director said he was going to throw out some topics and wanted me to say whatever came to mind.  The entire list was comprised of things going on in the news/pop culture at that time.

I didn’t get the job but have never forgotten the exercise because it was so fascinating.  In my follow-up with the PD, he shared that he wanted to see how informed I was about each topic (they were both serious and silly) to assess if I had a perspective that would be interesting on-the-air.  He said if I could be interesting in his office, I could do it on a show, too.

Time for the C-word.  It was a test of my curiosity.

Having a wonderment about the world around you and a curiosity about the topics of the day is a quality that separates the good from the great talent.  A natural curiosity leads you down new paths and makes you not only interesting to listen to, but more creative, too.  The talent I work with who perform at the highest levels are all naturally curious people, who are always acting on that by discovering new things about whatever is going on.  That makes them interesting to listen to.  Because they are always exploring the topics to learn more.

I use the exercise above with every applicant I interview for a job – I want to get a sense of their wonder outside of their circle.

If I’ve ever done a call with your morning show, you know I use a version of the interview technique above at the start of each conversation.  I casually ask the show what they think of a current topic or I share mine to see what happens.  True, I am making conversation to reconnect with all, but I am also looking for organic content.  I want to see if the room lights up.

Which leads me to Bill Cosby!

I had my weekly call with John and Tammy at KSON, San Diego the day we were shocked that he was being released from prison.  Many shows default to “we can’t talk about that” (which is rooted in a fear of the topic because they don’t know what to do with it).  The KSON show gave us natural, organic content around the Cosby story, all instigated by their curiosity.

John and Tammy were outraged and had a zillion questions about how that could happen.  Click John and Tammy’s logo to the right to hear what they did.  The topic was top shelf and they got all their questions answered from someone who could, which is excellent content for any radio show.

My friend Bruce St. James, who does mornings at WLS, Chicago, is incredibly smart (a good talent trait), but also quite curious (that’s what makes him smart!).  I happened upon this tweet the day the Cosby story broke, which said it all.  Bruce was also curious about how Cosby could be let out, so that fueled his breaks.  And the audience naturally took the trip with him.

I once worked with a talent who sat around all day watching Netflix.  He was incurious about everything and didn’t last long on the show.  The audience made its mind up on him quickly.

If I’m curious, it’s because of my mother.  Lillian was an exceptionally restless person, always wanting to know more, more, more about everything.  She made me watch TV shows that would make me think, compelled me to read magazines and newspapers to form an opinion, and to gravitate to people who were entirely different from me because that would provide a world in technicolor which might make me a more curious person.

Do you have curious talent doing your show?  People fascinated with everything going on and a desire to explore all of it?  How can you make them more curious?  It’s what we work on with every show I am lucky to touch.  My goal is talent who are bold, daring, and interesting so they stand out as one-of-a-kind.  We must access each of those traits because curious people lead to more creative, unique shows.

I’ve long wondered if curiosity is nature or nurture.  Maybe it’s a little of both.

Come to think of it, I guess I’m curious about curiosity.  Maybe I should explore that…

Go foster with your talent a more curious environment about everything.  Then you’ll be epic.